Huh?

Wow. I want to be a music reviewer. Then I can write nonsense like this review of Liz Phair’s new album. I can really tell if the reviewer doesn’t like the album or not. Some choice bits:

But you can’t always get what you want. And if you try sometimes, you just might find you’ve made something that isn’t a very good record. The music on Liz Phair is average, and the lyrics are, with a few slight gleams excepted, horrendous.

The thing is that Liz Phair is no Avril Lavigne. Phair has integrity and aesthetic subtlety, and she’s so much better than Lavigne that when she fakes being fake, it sounds, well, fake.

Nevertheless, on 18th listen, you’ve got to concede that Liz Phair, while not a very good record, is not so much a very bad record as it is a record about which it’s easy to say very bad things.

I’m not sure what the reviewer is trying to do. So the record is bad, but it’s bad in a good way, because Liz Phair is such a genius? She’s trying hard for a commercial hit, so she’s playing the corporate music game, but she makes a bad album just to prove she’s still an indie queen? Huh? If I have to listen to a pop record 18 times to decide that it’s bad record that might have redeeming intellectual qualities, something is wrong. If I have to listen to math rock, or dense ambient music, 18 times to decide that I like it, that’s ok, because it’s probably not meant to universally loved on the first listen. But this is pop, indie or otherwise. It shouldn’t have to grow on you…..